Bucking..

I'm going to say shoulder.
I know I have tapped my mare with my hand on her bum and she bucked.

If he was good for a while and just started bucking and if everything is the same, I'm going to say he's doing it to either get out of work, or he gets so excited, he does it.
Not sure how to stop either....

Yeah, that's what it feels like..He gets excited and is way too full of energy
I know he needs more work.
Thanks for all of your input. You have been helpful!

If anyone else has ideas I'm always open for more!

No problem! I hope someone else can give you better advice about this :) I know a little about bucking, but not a lot.

I hope you get things sorted out soon!

Pain/saddle fit has been brought up and ruled out so I won't mention that.

I picked up a new horse a few months back - a young mare. She has quite the attitude. One of her "tricks" was to buck at the lope. Especially when she wasn't in the mood for it. :)

To be fair, some of it was probably pain related. She wasn't too muscled up on the left and likely had trouble maintain a lope to the left. My being a little off balance on left turns didn't help. With the help of some friends watching the situation we figured out the cause and solved that part of the problem.

Still, she would have some real rodeo moments when she didn't want to work.

You don't like the one rein stop, but the same "disengage" principle is how I solved the behavior side of it.

First, used properly the ORS is a safe procedure. It is not simply pulling the horse's head around and bringing the horse off balance. My horse has great lateral flex and will easily bring her head to your knee on either side with a very soft rein. That lateral flex really helps when you need to disengage the hips.

Since my mare was protesting work, it was pretty easy to predict when the bucking would start. Knowing it was coming, I was prepared and ready. The instant I felt a buck coming on, I would pull her head around, left or right - doesn't matter. (It is hard to explain. It is more of a very sharp turn or "about face." The horse doesn't want to fall over either so she ends up turning rather than bucking. You end up disengaging the hips rather than fighting with the horse. It is done with very little rein and mostly body movement.) From there, I would so 20-30 seconds of "hips over" (basically a spin where the front legs keep position and the back legs move).

Sometimes, I would do hips over and then some serpentines.

The basic idea is to interrupt the buck (ideally before it occurs) and then make the horse work hard. After a few times, the horse will learn "thinking of a buck" = "I have to do too much work." The old "make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard" concept. As with any behavior training, timing of the correction is very important.

If the horse is bucking to avoid work, you have to make the correction tougher than the work being avoided. When you feel the buck coming on, work the horse hard for 20-30 seconds. When you get a good lope, only lope for a few strides and then break down and reward the horse (pet, say "good boy" etc.). The horse will quickly learn that doing what is asked (loping) is easier and much more enjoyable than doing the wrong thing (bucking).

The above solved my problem pretty quickly. My mare still has plenty of attitude (which is why I got a mare in the first place), but she has also developed a greater respect for me.

Hope this helps.

If your going to use a crop then I'd suggest not tapping him on the rear(maybe make him worse).


Do you get off or anything after his bucking fit?

My friends horse had the same sort of problem. She just had to shout go on do it n sit through it.It worked for her. Her horse has the odd day now but nowhere near how bad it was before.
That probley wouldn't work for you^^But I thought I wud share.

All I can suggest to keeping your heels down.


If its because his excitable then probley stop feeding him(if he's fed)or strip graze im if the grass is lush.

I don't no about anything else .

Okay thank you everyone! I rode him this evening after a lot of lunging and he was ok. Very high spirited but no bucking. We just went on a trail ride at a walk only. He wanted to trot but I held him back. I didn't have much time before it got dark so I wanted to keep things on a good note to end on a good note. I'm very convinced he just doesn't want to work and he has way too much energy. He gets sweet feed everyday and I saw a thread on here where people were saying sweet feed can make them full of energy. So we'll see how this all goes..

Does he do it only when riding with other horses or does he also do it when you ride alone?

If its just when other horses are around then it most likely is out of excitment.
I know my horses get like that at the canter , a right pair of broncs...even at 19 and 21 :roll:

Have you thought about purhaps changing his bit to one that might help give you a bit more leverage to pull his head up if he goes to buck?

My advice ....... prevention.
You know he's going to so be preapared before he does it. Don't let him get his head down, its a bit hard for a horse to do a proper buck if there head is up, they need to stick it down to get the motion to arc there back.
What I did to stop Banjo ( who was bad for bucking in excitment ), I learnt to predict any signs that he might buck....like the tips of his ears would go pointy and tence , he would arc his neck a bit and I felt his body tence also, at this moment I would move my hands up higher and back slighty more, sit up if not with a slight lean back and say AH AH AH very firmly. Slow him down a bit back to a steady trot and then try the canter or whatever again.

He does it alone or with others. Today on the ride I did keep my hands higher than normal and made a conscious effort to make sure his head was up. No bucks! :)
I'll write more later but I'm off to watch a movie with the boyfriend :)
Thanks again!

I'm glad you had a good ride with no bucks today! Baby steps :)

Does he get a lot of turnout? Or does he only go out for a couple hours and then back into the stall?

My geldings are on sweet feed, but they are currently out 24/7 and they are far from being hot.

Just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in :)

He's out 24/7 so the sweet feed probably isn't it.
And I forgot to answer another question earlier.. When he bucks me off I get back on him right away if I can and make him at least walk for a while to make sure he knows that's not a way to get out of riding. Like I said earlier though the first time it happened I couldn't get back on him because every time I put my foot up to get on him he took off bucking. That was a few years ago though. And another time at a horse show when he bucked me off my 4-H leader and I lunged him A LOT.
If I could sit through it I would! He is a super-bucker! Lol.
I think maybe next time when I have more time to work with him I'm going to try the circles and such if I feel he is getting ready to act up. And the new bit I might try also. He's on a D-ring snaffle. I may switch to the Tom Thumb Snaffle..